Translation of the protected type mechanism in Ada 83

ABSTRACT

Several features of the Ada 94 language are useful to improve the efficiency of Ada programs. Especially the protected type mechanism is useful to improve the efficiency of concurrent Ada programs sharing common data structures. In order to facilitate the transition to Ada 94 before Ada 94 compilers are widely available, this paper proposes the use of an adapter which can be either a methodology, or an automatic translator. The adapter accepts source including protected objects and produces Ada 83 source. The results of several tests show that the performances of concurrent programs can be dramatically improved by using protected objects.

REFERENCES

• 1: Ada 9X Reference Manual Draft 5.0, Mapping/Revision Team, Intermetrics, June 1994.
• 2: Ada 9X Rationale Draft 5.0, Mapping/Revision Team, Intermetrics, June 1994.
• 3: P. J. Courtois , F. Heymans , D. L. Parnas, Concurrent control with “readers” and “writers”, Communications of the ACM, v.14 n.10, p.667-668, Oct. 1971 [doi>10.1145/362759.362813]
• 4: A. Burns , G. L. Davies, Ada 9X protected types in Pascal-FC, ACM SIGAda Ada Letters, v.XII n.6, p.59-74, Nov./Dec. 1992 [doi>10.1145/142016.142025]
• 5: Kwok-bun Yue, Semaphores in Ada-94, ACM SIGAda Ada Letters, v.XIV n.5, p.71-79, Sept./Oct. 1994 [doi>10.1145/192867.192870]

INDEX TERMS

Primary Classification:
  D. Software
  D.3 PROGRAMMING LANGUAGES
      D.3.2 Language Classifications

          Nouns: Ada

Additional Classification:
  D. Software
  D.3 PROGRAMMING LANGUAGES
      D.3.3 Language Constructs and Features
          Subjects: Data types and structures
      D.3.4 Processors
          Subjects: Translator writing systems and compiler generators

General Terms:
Algorithms, Languages